December 26, 2004

Ludu Daw Ahmar is the doyen of Burmese writers — male or female — who still stride the literary stage in Burma (Myanmar). Born on November 29, 1915 in Mandalay, Burma, Daw Ahmar, as is her real name — Daw being the honorofic used to address women — acquired the title “Ludu” after she was associated with the publication of that name. Ludu in Burmese means “the masses”.

Daw Ahmar’s prolixity and skill as a writer made her quite well-known at an early age in the mid 1930s while she was studying at the Rangoon University. She began working on the translation of Maurice Collis’ Trials in Burma which was first published in 1938. Ma Ahmar left the university before completing her graduation and joined the family business. She also opened a paper shop in Mandalay.

At the university she had met a young magazine editor by the name of U Hla. She kept in touch with him after she had moved to Mandalay and they were married in 1939. This union proved to be a turning point in Ahmar’s life. Maung Hla joined her in Mandalay and a few years later after the Second World War they launched a journal and then a daily paper by the name of Ludu.

By the early 1950s the Ludu had become (at least in the city of Mandalay) so well-known that the founder-editor couple became known as Ludu U Hla and Ludu Daw Ahmar. As the title of the newspaper which Daw Ahmar co-founded indicates, the newspaper had a very explicit ‘left’ orientation and outlook. In the 1960s both U Hla and Daw Ahmar had a daily column in their newspaper. U Hla’s columns had the generic title of ‘General Rambling Writings’ and dealt with more mundane issues and only occasionally with political matters. Daw Ahmar’s columns had the title of ‘The Moving (Political) Events in the World’. Her columns were more ‘fiery’ and more politically explicit than those of her husband.

In her columns written throughout the 1960s Daw Ahmar did not mince her words in her strident criticism — nay condemnations — of what was then (and even more so now) the world’s foremost imperial power, the United States. The Ludu was scathing in its attacks on Johnson’s administration’s policies and involvement in and aggression against South and North Vietnam. It was also effusive in its praise of the Vietnamese ‘freedom fighters’ (the Vietcong) and the North Vietnamese. During the Cold War period of the late 1950s to early 1970s the Ludu was critical not only of the United States but also of the Soviet Union and supported firmly the policies of People’s China.

In June 1967 Sino-Burmese riots broke out in Rangoon and curfew was imposed on the city. Within two weeks of the riots the Ludu was shut down by the government. After more than 21 years of publication the newspaper was published for the last time on July 7, 1967.

But Ludu Daw Ahmar won fame for herself not on account of her political writings — significant and independent-minded as they were — but her meticulous study and writings on various aspects of Burmese culture and arts (including music and dance). They are her masterpieces that enrich the readers’ knowledge of these subjects. Her research and publications made her one of the most significant Burmese writers in the second half of the 20th century.

Her book Pyithu Chit Thaw Ahnu Pyinnya Thei Myar (Artistes Who Are Loved by the People) won the National Literature Prize for the year 1964. In that book she studied the lives and artistic achievements of the Burmese who mainly (but not exclusively) flourished in the pre-Second World War era.

Her subsequent books about three Burmese male artistes entitled Aung Bala, Pho Sein, Sein Gadoan was published in 1967. In 1973 she published Anyeint, a significant tome about traditional Burmese ‘street entertainment’ or ‘open air theatre’ where artistes and clowns entertained the public: a centuries-old cultural tradition especially prevalent in Upper Burma. She also published another book Myanma Mahagita (Burmese Classical Music) in 1989. She has published at least two books about her native and beloved city of Mandalay (1991 and 1993) and a part memoirs or reminiscences of her earlier years Kyanma Doe Nge Nge Ga (Of the Days When We Were Young) (1994). In 1997 she published Ahmae Shay Zagar (Mother’s Talk — based on From Days of Old) specifically intended for younger audiences exhorting them to maintain and make use of what is good from the Burmese culture of yore in countering the negative effects of modernization if not globalization which have seeped into Burmese society.

In her late eighties she still contributes articles to Burmese magazines. She is also sought after by the Burmese language services of foreign radio stations on a variety of literary and political topics. Most recently in August 2004 she expressed her views in an interview with a Burmese language foreign radio station on the literary achievements of the late Burmese poet Minthuwun who died at the age of 95 on August 15, 2004.

None of the books that Daw Ahmar published after 1964 won any of the National Literature prizes though. The reason, apart from the political profile of her family (explained briefly below), is that starting around 1966 as part of a movement spearheaded by the Upper Burma Writers Association she began to write in the ‘colloquial style’ which is understood by the common people. But this innovation was rejected by the orthodox literary establishment which resisted the move to popularize or ‘de-elitise’ the Burmese writing style. The orthodox writers who dominated the National Literature Board have refused to award any literary prize to any literary genre if it is written in the ‘colloquial style’.

Still, the tides of change cannot be stemmed forever. Less than four decades after Daw Ahmar pioneered the use of the colloquial style. Most of the articles in magazines, short-stories and novels that are published are now written in the ‘colloquial style’. As a person of strong political as well as literary convictions Ludu Daw Ahmar has firmly continued to write in the colloquial style which makes her writing fresh, explicit, direct, easily accessible, effective and — in the complimentary sense of the word — punchy.

Among thousands of her admirers and readers she is simply known as ‘Ahmae’ (Mother). All her travails — the imprisonment of her husband and herself and the assassination of her son and her husband — did not dampen her spirit or erode her cheerfulness and optimism. Her concern for friends and readers, her fellow country men and women did not weaken. Even at her venerable age she is up to date in matters ranging from local gossip to domestic and world affairs.

For about 20 years now it has become a tradition for her ‘sons and daughters’ to gather on or around November 29 every year to to celebrate her birthday and her life (with its rich and varied contributions to society) to pay homage to the ‘Mother’. Last month she entered her 90th year, and this writer too would like to pay tribute to Ahmae Daw Ahmar. As the Burmese saying goes, ‘May you live more than a hundred years!’

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